James Daly

Some crews will give a buffer for these instances, pardon my use of Feet rather than meters for the example: 1000' roll loaded on camera, 750' shot yielding a 250' short end, BUT instead of calling the roll 750 out/250 SE, call it 760' out/240' se, to give yourself a 10 foot buffer, that way you won't roll out early. I guess in meters and in 16mm, call it 5 meter buffer? I don't know, I'm used to feet. -James Daly IATSE local 600 Camera Assistant

Did a feature with this thing/worked at csc for a couple years. Instead of taping the whole seem of the mag, just "pinch" at the top of the door from latch to latch. Get plenty of extension blocks for the handle for more real estate (with OB monitor, transmitter, lens light, cinetape the camera fills up fast!) do yourself a favor and go 15mm with the lightweight follow focus, that way you can always use the breakaway plate to go handheld. if you use the arri zoom control you can cable from that to the lcs port, then straight out to the body with the motor! no more y-cable! (a lot of csc preps don't know this though, i discovered it by bored curiosity.) Use the loop guards! the pressure plate is ON THE MAG! also blow out the camera like crazy with every change, and instruct your loader to treat every mag like its the camera gate. use the 4pin ports on the video tap, pwr+video in one! good luck, I work with this camera all the time, email me with any questions!

Hey There. As an assistant that has loaded on 4 features, 3 tv shows, and countless commercials, almost all with multiple stocks, I can tell you that the key to multiple stocks is indeed "cutting the roll', commonly called short ending, and COLOR coding everything!. You should send you exposed film to the lab as soon as you shoot it, at the end of each shooting day/weekend. If you keep exposed film in a mag for an extended period of time, you're risking your precious time and money spent on exposing that film. Can it out right away. Send it to the lab. It's worth it. Keep PLENTY of cans, bags, and cores on hand. The lab will provide these for free, as well as camera reports, which will help you keep track of your rolls and what is on them. Also have a color system for you stocks, and have rolls of each color in 1" gaff on hand. My color coding is usually red for 500t, blue for 250d, yellow for 50d, or whatever the slowest stock is. And remember the standard: Black tape for EXPOSED, White or colored tape for UNEXPOSED. When you load a mag with 50D, use yellow to label and seal the mag, so when you go to quickly reload, you know right away which stock is inside the mag. Let's say you start your day with a shot in a snowy field, shooting with 50D on mag-A. Then you go inside and shoot 500T, but want enough film loaded to shoot a long scene, using 2 mags loaded with 500T. You shot 150' of 50D outdoors, with 250' remaining. -Label the magazine after loading it with the mag #, roll #, amount loaded (400'), the date, and stock number. -Can out the exposed film, seal the can with BLACK tape, transfer the label from the mag to the can and add the amount exposed (150') to the label. -Can out the unexposed 50D, seal with colored tape (i'd use yellow) labeling the can 250' SE (short end), the date, the stock number. -Remember once you cut the exposed film off of a roll, the unexposed film is now a NEW roll number. -also remember you need to put a new core in the magazine after canning out both sides. You now have the remaining 50D safe in a can, a new short roll to use later! And your exposed film is not risking some new first time crew member opening the wrong latch and ruining the last months worth of intermittent shooting. DO NOT keep you film in the freezer! Do NOT keep the mag on the camera! Do not put your camera in a cold environment for a long period of time! good luck shooting! -james

I worked as a prep for Arri in NYC for a couple years, did a LOT of awful bitchwork, got paid next to nothing, practically gave my life to the job. Came out knowing EVERYTHING about the equipment, and more importantly, every ac in the city. Give a rental house job a shot. It's an enormous sacrifice, but if you really want to work in camera, it's a great way to do it.

I can attest from working for all sorts of AC's in NYC from Major features to indie features, from tiny budget music videos to huge commercials, that everyone takes poop out of the cases and puts it in their own poop. it's entirely impractical to lug around a big box when you have a light little bag that can hold all you need and have it all right next to Camera.

All arri integrated video taps will have a port for it. Sometimes they're under a little gray plastic hood on the top of the tap. Starlite monitors, canatrans, and those big useless 6" arri monitors will use the cable.

Last week went well, we have an outdated example of the test (with compensation questions and whatnot that still apply). We went over the questions and explained to each other why the right answer was what it was. We moved our meeting place to bar nine on 9th between 53rd and 54th. All interested contact me!

At csc we make $8/hr. It doesn't eem that bad until you factor in the whole NYC rent thing. Rice and beans have been my M.O. for about a year now.

Hey y'all All aspiring ACs planning on joining the New York chapter of IATSE Local 600, the International Cinematographer's Guild as a Camera Assistant this year know that a test must be taken. Tired of waiting for the test? Call the union office, get preliminary paperwork, and send it in! Get 5 friends to do it! The more paperwork that is in their file, the sooner they will offer a test! Us prep techs at Arri CSC are ITCHIN' to leave, and we can't quit to do some fabulous union mag loading until the test comes. The lot of us have started up a study group that will meet on a weekly basis (probably thursday nights) at the Barnes and Nobles at John Jay College on the corner of 10th ave and 55th st (I know its in the middle of nowhere, but it's right near where we work. We will be meeting almost weekly, depending on the size of the group, at around 6pm-7pm (we don't know when we get out of work until our supervisor tells us when to go home at the end of the day) Any and all interested in joining us, meeting some other young pros, and participating in a come-one-come-all-don't-be-intimidated-by-not-knowing-as-much-as-anyone environment! We all want to better ourselfs. Us prep techs are tired of scanning gear more than using it, i'm sure tons of you are tired of PAing and Interning. Let's get Learnin' SEND ME A MESSAGE! -James S. Daly, slave to the motion picture camera

Buyer beware of the RedRock whip. I used one for a 4 day shoot and by he end of that 4th day the knob was coming loose for the receptacle for the flex shaft. you could take the whip off, turn it the other way and tighten it back and be fine for a while, but I guess I just like the good old 2 piece arri whips with no chance of any unscrewing anywhere. I also was using a cavision follow focus on this shoot. Everything was loose by the end of the 4th day, and it was in places where there were no screws available to the consumer to do a self-fix. I HATE cheap follow focus products made by HD serving companies trying to make a more affordable version of arri/pani gear. Although I understand that they are a great opportunity for HD shooters to have all the bells and whistles, the cost is quality.

As a current employee of Arri CSC in NY, I highly recommend rental house employment/internships, but with caution. While it is the best way to meet union ACs, be in their face, prep their jobs, use them as references to get in the union, and then eventually get hired by them, it is not glamorous by any stretch of the imagination. When I started at CSC they had me scrubbing cases for months, going up and down the elevator huffing gear to and fro, cleaning air conditioner vent systems, throwing out archived financial documents in dusty basements, pulling velcro and tape off of cases when they come back from features. On top of that rental house management personnel are not there to be friendly cinematography enthusiasts, they are hard ass bosses, but still stand up people. If you go into these places expecting film school, you are dreadfully mistaken. The pay off is, of course, now I am on a first name basis with every top working AC in new york (arri is the creme de la creme out here, but out west i'm sure all the big names are going to pani on a weekly basis), I know all of the equipment back and forth, I can set up and troubleshoot and camera or piece of gear in house, plus every other camera I've come into contact with I've had time to learn on (people bring in gear from other rental houses and use our support gear and lenses), and I have overall a good time. I'm expecting to be out by the end of the summer with the work I've been getting + after taking the union test and joining. It has been a year of sacrifice mentally, physically, financially and socially, but it beats 5 or 6 years of PAing and still not knowing the gear before you start. Good luck!

If you want to put some money into it the 416 goes 1 FPS, you could use a remote start switch to just switch on and off within a second for your time lapse. Theoretically you could use an intervalometer to do the time lapse shot and then just switch to the normal motor between exposures. I advise against though. In my very recent experience intervalometers do not work well with the sr3, the shutter will not cap fully and when exposing will sneak into the gate a bit to chop off a hefty portion of the corner. It was such a problem that we at CSC got rid of all of ours a long time ago. I recently did a check out with one from TCS and all of the above problems were instantly appearant. If you have a desired t-stop you want to shoot with, the remote witch could be the way to go, for you could always take the lense off and compensate with the shutter. The obvious cons being possible dust introduction and moving the locked camera.

Lance Acord in Being John Malcovich

I only have experience with the cinetape, and my advice could only be categorized as cautionary. Although it can work wonders and is suprizingly simple in set-up and calibration, it is certainly not to be trusted as a dead on measurement. With a subject as small as a human head, the cinetape can often miss the desired subject, so my advice is to use it as back-up for your own measurements and intuitions. and don't trust it for critical measurements (probably closer than 4 or 5 feet), it is not dead accurate.

William, If it is a budgetary decision to buy a 3-perf movement, I would advise against. THe headache of finding a lab that can project, print, and not charge extra for the handling of 3-perf might outweigh the the cost of good ol' universal 4-perf. Also, working at Arri CSC, I've quickly noticed the rarity of 3-perf movements, and they might be a costly addition to an already costly camera package. Also, to piggyback other posts, this camera is about as loud as a lawnmower. -James Daly prep tech, camera slave. Arri CSC